“No, Evan. That’s not what I want…I want to talk. I want—”
“I don’t care what you want anymore. It’s what I want now!” he shouted. He took his house key off his key chain and hurled it across the kitchen, then stormed out, slamming the door behind him. I looked down at the bouquet of daisies on the table that he had carried under his arm when he walked through the door earlier, and it hit me all at once. After months of thinking I had it all figured out, I had finally come to my senses and realized I hadn’t. I had let the greatest thing that had ever happened to me walk out the door. My last thoughts as I went to bed that night was that we’d work things out. We would get past this somehow and be happy together—just the two of us.
By the time I finished telling Theo my sad story, I was a sobbing mess. He pulled me into a hug and rubbed my back, putting me at ease just like his sister had a few nights ago. “My last memory of him. The last thing on his mind when he died was that his wife was a cheater. I was the reason he got in the car that night drunk. I was the reason he veered off the road and crashed into that tree. I’m the reason he’s dead, the same way as if I held a gun to his head and pulled the trigger.”
Theo shook his head and looked down at me. “It’s not your fault. You have to stop thinking that way or else it’s going to eat away at you for the rest of your life.”
“I just…I shouldn’t have told him. I should’ve just—”
“Should’ve what? Had this secret between the two of you? Regardless if you were going to try and make a go of your marriage or not, you did the right thing by being honest.”
“I feel like such a horrible person for running to the first guy who showed me some attention instead of my husband. I promised on the day I married him that I would be faithful to him. He always put me on a pedestal. He wouldn’t even give another woman a second look, and I did the worst thing imaginable.”
“Look, I’m the last person to pass judgment. I kind of know how you’re feeling in one aspect, but luckily for my ex, she ended up getting out of our marriage fairly unscathed and got something better out of it. So, I can’t say I know how you’re feeling over the losing-your-husband part of it.”
“It’s just so unfair. It happened so quickly. I didn’t get to say goodbye. I didn’t get to hear him say he hates my guts or how angry he was at me…anything. I would’ve taken anything just to hear his voice again.”
Theo sighed deeply and backed away, staring back at the water once again. “I don’t know, sometimes I think it’s less cruel to have someone we love taken away from us quickly instead of watching them wither away over time. Kind of like ripping a Band-Aid off. It hurts badly at first, but it allows us to deal with our grief all at once instead of every single day. Every time you look at the person, you know their fate, and what makes it worse is they know their fate too. So not only do you have to be strong for yourself, but for them too.”
Now it was me who was offering him comfort. I placed my hand on his arm while he remained silent. “Is someone you care about sick?”
He nodded, still keeping his gaze straight ahead before slowly turning to me and whispering, “It’s Kate.”
My stomach clenched and all the pain I was feeling just moments ago talking about Evan engulfed me once again, shifting to Kate and Theo. “Oh my God, I’m so sorry.” I immediately thought of how attentive Theo was to his sister, so worried about her well-being. Then I thought about Kate and how stoic she was each time I had seen her, being my shoulder to cry on when she was the one who needed a shoulder herself. “What’s—”
“Cancer,” he answered before I could get the rest of the words out. “She was first diagnosed when she was at university and it went into remission after her treatments. So much time went by and she thought she beat it. She hadn’t been feeling well, and when she went to the doctor, she found out it was back and it had spread.”
“Is she going to have treatments again?”
“Her doctor’s prognosis wasn’t very positive even with the chemo. It’s metastasized.”
I wasn’t an expert on cancer by any means, but I was familiar with that word metastasized, and I knew it wasn’t good.
“I told her she needs to get a second opinion and even a third for that matter. They’re making new progress every day with cancer treatments. She has to try, if not for herself, then for Thomas. I just feel like she’s giving up. She was so adamant that she take this trip, almost like she thinks this is the last time she’ll ever...” His shoulders slouched and he sucked in a deep breath, trying to keep his emotions as bay. “Almost like this is her last holiday. I honestly don’t know what I’ll do if something happens to her. She’s my little—” He turned his back so I wouldn’t see him breaking down, but the pain in his voice was betraying him. I placed my hand on his shoulder. “I feel so helpless. Her entire life, I’ve been the one to take care of her, making sure she was okay. But I can’t make this okay.”
He turned to face me, and I took his hands in mine. “You can’t make it go away, but you can make it okay. As okay for her as it’s going
